The articles and essays in this blog range from the short to the long. Many of the posts are also introductory (i.e., educational) in nature; though, even when introductory, they still include additional commentary. Older material (dating back mainly to 2005) is being added to this blog over time.

Tuesday, 24 March 2015

A Short Note on Empiricism & Science

Not
only is there empiricism within philosophy, there's also an
empiricist position towards science. Indeed some philosophers argued
that science itself is empiricist.

Dave
Hume put this case very simply when, according to Ernan McMullin (in
his 1984 paper 'A
Case for Scientific Realism'), he “restricted science to the
patterning of sense impressions”. Of course this also stemmed from
his well-known position on causality. And causality was always seen,
up until the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, as the “cementof the universe” (J. L. Mackie). Indeed the rejection of
causation (or, more correctly perhaps, necessary causal
relations) is at the heart of empiricist philosophy. In Hume's case,
he “simply rejects the notion of cause according to which one could
try to infer from these impressions to the unobserved entities
causing them” (McMullin, 259).

There
are obviously many problems with empiricism and, specifically, with
“empiricist science”.

Take
elementary particles.

The
fact is that no one has ever observed an elementary particle (such as
an electron). However, people do observe things which lead them to
believe that electrons exist. Take
the cloud chambers which are used by scientists to discover
elementary particles and their nature. Charged
entities (such as electrons) leave ionized tracks which betray their
presence (or their former presence).

Nonetheless,
you still can't say that you've observed, say, an electron. All one can say
is that you observed an ionized track in a cloud chamber. Alternatively,
Ernan McMullin says:

“An
electron may be defined as the entity that is causally responsible
for, amongst other things, certain kinds of cloud tracks.”

He
goes into more detail by saying that an electron “will be said to
exist.... if a number of convergent sorts of causal lines lead to it”
(262).

There
are many other simple reasons as to why an empiricist approach to
science fails. Or the least one can say is that empiricism is
inadequate.

Take
the Devonian geological period.

McMullin
calls this period (or its postulation): “a theoretical entity”
(267). It's
a theoretical entity quite simply because it can't be observed. However,
that doesn't mean that we should reject it as a theory or even as a
genuine period in the earth's history.

In
other words, even though the Devonian period can't be observed, we
can still say that this period existed roughly 400 to 350 million
years ago. We can also say that “the dominant life form on earth
was fish and a number of important developments in the vertebrate
line occurred” (276).